


Why You Should Not Google Yourself

by NotASpaceAlien



Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Gen, M/M, Silly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-20
Updated: 2015-10-20
Packaged: 2018-04-27 05:45:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,445
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5036104
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NotASpaceAlien/pseuds/NotASpaceAlien
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Crowley discovers that people on the internet are talking about him, but he doesn't exactly like what they're saying.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Why You Should Not Google Yourself

**Author's Note:**

> On tumblr at http://not-a-space-alien.tumblr.com/post/126558373640/for-neverrwhere-because-of-what-they-wrote-in-this

He really should have seen it coming.  Crowley knew what the internet was like.  


_1990_  


Not long after the Almostpocalypse was over, Crowley saw something...unusual on the shelf of his local bookstore.

“Angel,” he said frantically into the phone on his way home.*  There was a plastic bag on the passenger’s seat of the Bentley, and it contained exactly one book. “Did you see the book?“

* * *

*Crowley, of course, had a car phone, because it was still the 90′s, and even though the Bentley didn’t have a space for a car phone,** it had one anyway, because Crowley knew what he wanted.  


**Or a Blaupunkt, for that matter.

* * *

“What book?” said Aziraphale.

“The book!  I thought you knew all about books, you haven’t seen it yet?  We’re _on the cover.”_

There was a pause.  “Oh, _that_ book.”

“So you have seen it?”

“Well, yes.”

“Is this Adam’s idea of a joke?”

Aziraphale’s voice was hesitant.  “I _did_ talk to him about it.  I told him I would have preferred if he had kept it just between those of us who were there when it happened, but he said it was a.... _cool_ story, and that there was no harm because no one could remember it even if they read the book.  I think he just wanted to see himself be the hero of a novel-”

“How is it?”

“Beg your pardon?”

“The novel.  How is it?  Is it good?”

Another pause.  “Ah...Mr. Pratchett and Mr. Gaiman...were certainly _creative_ with it.  I’m not sure what exactly he told them...or if he told them anything at all...or if he perhaps simply manipulated their manuscript as they sent it back and forth-”

Crowley hung up without a further word.  He drove straight back to his flat, threw the Bentley into the first parking spot he was able to find,*** went upstairs, sat directly on his couch, and read the entire book in one sitting.

* * *

***He actually found it under someone else’s car, but he always maintained that this counted.

* * *

He was mortified.  It was all right here, laid out for everyone to read; everyone and anyone knew about his plants, and his James Bond bullet hole stickers, and how he had nearly pissed himself when Aziraphale asked him to stay and face down Satan, how he had run into the burning bookshop-

At least it hadn’t mentioned [the boxers.](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/81k9t9usc4L._SX425_.jpg)

He tried to convince himself it wasn’t that bad.  He didn’t come across as lazy, not really, he was _cunning,_ working smarter not harder, right...?  And facing down Satan wasn’t something a _coward_ would do, even if he had needed to hold Aziraphale’s hand for that bit, and he’d need to be a pretty cool guy to do most of the stuff he did in the book, right...?  


It didn’t really count because no one knew it was _him_ , except for Aziraphale, and Aziraphale already knew all those things about him-

Oh, Aziraphale had never heard the “Sauntering Downwards” bit.   That’s be a whole conversation the angel would want to have with him.  


At the moment all he had on his mind was all the things he’d have to justify to Aziraphale, but in the background the internet was lurking, waiting to explode in popularity.

  


_Present day_

Crowley wasn’t sure how he hadn’t seen it coming.

He knew the internet, after all.  He practically _invented_ the internet.  Well, okay, not invented.  But all that pornography wasn’t going to propagate itself and humans seem much easier to tempt with this particular mode of delivery than usual.  So he had had a hand in it, and he knew how it worked, and he did _not_ know why he hadn’t seen it coming.  Hadn’t wanted to think about it, he supposed, but if he had stopped for a moment he would have realized it existed.

Behind reddit, Crowley had discovered that tumblr was the most entertaining website because of exactly how easy it was to use it to stir up trouble.  The best part was most of his victims believed they were morally in the right no matter how they behaved, and that made tempting**** them very easy.

* * *

****Crowley was familiar with the word “troll” and had actually helped pioneer the concept of trolling, but refused to use the word on himself because it did not strike him as being classy enough.  


* * *

That was where he discovered it.

_What is “AO3″?  I’m web-savvy, I should know-_

_Dear lo- Sa- somebody-_

_There’s a nsfw tag??_

_That is_ not _what my wings look like-_

_That is_ not _what my tongue looks like_

_THAT IS NOT WHAT MY-_

His chair clattered to the floor as he rushed to get away from his computer and into the kitchen.  He would need a higher BAC if he wanted to continue.

Okay, as bad as it was seeing himself as a- a- _bottom,_ that wasn’t the worst part.*****

* * *

*****Crowley did not want to admit how much he enjoyed the nsfw tag, and tried to convince† himself he only liked seeing art of him and Aziraphale engaging in various activities of a scandalous nature because it meant he was defiling an angel and therefore misbehaving.

†He was not entirely successful.

* * *

They thought he was uncool.  And no one was defending him.

_“Tiny gay plant nerd.”_  
“He is so smol.”  
“He just wants naps and his angel.”  
“He tries so hard be cool lmao what a nerd.”  
“the bby”  
“ADORABLE”  
“screaming”  
“precious bless”  
“I love these two nerds”  
“Precious geek bbs”  


And this was before he had even delved into the RP pages.

He had to look up what “otp” meant, and felt his disquiet growing.

There were page after page of analysis about how he acted in the novel, drawing conclusions about his personality, about how he wasn’t Evil, speculating and arguing about his gender and sexuality, raving about how cute he was-

“I AM THE SSSSERPENT OF EDEN!”he hissed at one particularly offensively sweet image of him and Aziraphale wrapped in a blanket together on a couch.  “Thisss isss _degrading_!  You ssshould be afraid of me!  You sshould-  should-”

A few hours later, after he had read all fifty chapters of an elaborate story in which he and Aziraphale get married and live in a life in which he had been assigned various uncool hobbies, ‡ he decided to do something about this.  Two could play at this game.  


* * *

‡They were actually hobbies that appealed to him a lot upon hearing about them, and decided he ought to give them a try later on, but for the moment he was satisfied to simply fume with anger about how he would never _collect seashells,_ _what kind of demon do you think I am I deserve more respect than this do you really think I-_

* * *

He couldn’t use his existing account because of all the horribly homophobic, racist, ableist, classist, misogynistic, and transphobic things he had said on it*, so he made a fresh account.  


* * *

*They were actually rather mildly these things, but given the tags he had affixed to his posts, they reached people who interpreted them as horribly offensive.

* * *

The username _hellsmostapproachable_ was already taken, as was _crowley, ajcrowley, theserpent,_ and _theserpentofeden,_ so he eventually settled on _ajc666_ , and visited several other websites to go along with it.

An entire week of frantic typing later, he had made no progress to speak of.

“ _That doesn’t really seem consistent with the way he’s characterized in the novel”_  
“no you’ve got it wrong, he only likes to think _he’s cool.  in reality he’s a huge nerd”_  
“He thinks gluing coins to the sidewalk is proper demonic activity!”  
“He tries to hide it but he’s nothing but a giant sweetheart”  
“No, but imagine Crowley tripping over his shoelaces trying to act cool-”  
“He’s just an adorable nerd and I love him”  
“Have you read anything by [irisbleufic](http://irisbleufic.tumblr.com/)?  I feel like she really captures the complexity of his character.”

Crowley slumped in his chair.  “Gluing coins to the sidewalk _is_ proper demonic activity,” he muttered.

Moving slowly, he collapsed onto the couch and grabbed his phone.  


“What is it, my dear boy?” said Aziraphale’s voice.  


“Aziraphale, liking James Bond doesn’t make someone a nerd, does it?”

“Erm, what?”

“I mean, James Bond is _cool_.  It’s not like it’s a _nerdy_ thing, because it’s _cool_ so...”

“Crowley, I’m not sure what you’re getting at.”

Crowley paused, letting defeat sink in, realizing he was defending himself in the exact way those people on the internet would have predicted.  Then, weakly:

“Aziraphale, would you be interested in....ah, I dunno....going to the beach to collect shells this weekend?”  



End file.
